This is related to the proposed listing of the polar bear, something that has a lot to do with climate change.
The New York Times got a copy of a USFWS memo, and it shows the DOI’s continuing subordination of science to Administration politics — employees need authorization to speak about the issue.
Here is the article in the NYT.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He has been a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and also its President. For many years he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Well, this Dirk Kempthorne Interior Department continued Soviet-style repression of biologists and science shows that the Fish and Wildlife Service simply can not be trusted to do anything based on science, and must kowtow to industry.
At the afternoon session of the wolf hearings, Mr. Bangs kept assuring the public that if things go awry with wolves once they are released into the hands of the Butch Otter Slaughter in Idaho, FWS would act to restore federal protection. Until every one of the Bush political hacks is out of positions of power, and the country is headed in a new direction, this assurance is a joke. Just like Big Oil muzzles how FWS employees talk about climate change, the Public Lands Ranching and Whining Industry runs wolf issues in FWS, including even what FWS considers “suitable habitat”.